THE FLOWEELESS PLANTS. 



As a tribe of vegetable curiosities, pleasantly associated 

 with cool grots, damp shady woods, rocks rising in the 

 midst of the forest, with the edges of fountains, the roofs 

 of old houses, and the trunks and decayed branches of 

 trees, may be named the flowerless plants. Few persons 

 know the extent of their advantages in the economy of 

 vegetation ; still less are they aware how greatly they 

 contribute to the beauty of some of the most beautiful 

 places in nature, affording tints for the delicate shading 

 of many a native landscape, and an embossment for the 

 display of some of the fairest flowers of the field. The 

 violet and the anemone, that peep out upon us in the 

 opening of spring, have a livelier glow and animation 

 when embosomed in their green beds of moss; and 

 the arethusa blushes more beautifully by the side of the 

 stream when overshadowed by the broad pennons of the 

 umbrageous fern. The old tree with its mosses wears a 

 look of freshness in its decay, the bald rock loses its 

 baldness with its crown of lichens and ferns, and every 

 barren spot in the pasture or by the wayside is enlivened 

 and variegated by the carpet of flowerless plants, that 

 spread their green gloss and many-colored fringes over 

 the surface of the soil. 



Mosses enter into all our ideas of picturesque ruins ; 

 for they alone are evidence that the ruins are the work 

 of time. An artificial ruin can have no such accompani- 

 ment until time has hallowed it by veiling its surface 

 with these memorials. They join with the ivy in adorn- 



